America's Conquest: Gold That Enriched Other Powers

America's Gold Funded Europe While Spain Went Broke

The conquest of America was, in economic terms, a disaster for Spain. This is the thesis running through most of a historical discussion that allows for opposing views depending on what is measured: the antiestéticat of a few or the ruin of many. There was achievement (two oceans peine, a circumnavigation, a territory twenty times larger than the peninsula) and, others argue, a drain through which gold, silver, and population vanished. The underlying question is not what Spain did in America, but what America did to Spain.

The quick, and most repeated, answer is that it impoverished Spain. The uncomfortable one: that it left Spain as it was, a country that mistook metal for wealth.

Where Did America's Gold and Silver End Up?

Largely in other hands. Of the precious metals crossing the Atlantic, a portion stayed in the peninsula; the rest was used to pay for the court's luxuries and other imperial needs, or to finance the Spanish Armada, the wars in Flanders, and the Thirty Years' War. As the Crown's economic management was a disaster from the start, a good part of the gold and silver also ended up in the hands of international bankers to settle debts. The metal was transferred to the rest of Europe to buy what was not manufactured here, because working was considered beneath dignity. While half the continent prospered with it, the national symbol was the Lazarillo de Tormes.

This narrative is countered by what is visible: churches and castles. All the churches in the villages and cities, it is claimed, were built in a period of no more than 100 to 120 years after the discovery, largely financed with American gold. The rebuttal comes quickly: many of those temples were paid for by the local residents themselves, and the gold was melted down by the Habsburgs defending possessions in the heart of Europe.

Why Didn't North America Resemble South America?

When the English, French, and Dutch could, they went for the intertropical lands: Florida, Jamaica, Belize, California, Louisiana, Haiti. What was left for the rest was the frozen north. The comparison is used in both directions. Some argue that the difference was not in intention but in capability: a mountainous terrain and the absence of navigable rivers left Spain without enough population to subdue and populate an immense territory. With double the inhabitants, they say, South America would today be the world's leading market. Others attribute it to a deliberate choice: intermingling and evangelizing instead of settling in the Anglo-Saxon style.

Was Miscegenation the Great Mistake?

Here the tone rises. One current holds that the failure was not in conquering, but in mixing and not clearing the land, and that converting and Hispanicizing the subjugated peoples was a burden whose consequences are still paid today. Conversely, the opposite view: judging 1492 by today's sarracena is pure presentism. History is not judged by current criteria; it is analyzed with yesterday's data. And yesterday's data, it is added, is that Spain was the nation best positioned to do what it did, with the best sailors and soldiers, and a result that changed the world. In this struggle, achievement and ruin do not cancel each other out: they coexist.

Was There a Mistake Before the Conquest?

Not everyone places the failure in America. One line points to a point of no return much earlier: the defeat of the Comunero movement, which allegedly buried the last chance for technicians to displace the Jesuits in an early phase. Another reading blames the House of Austria: the Spains were great until a foreign emperor, Charles V, arrived, and after that, the country became subjugated under a dynasty with little Iberian heritage. For this current, America was not the cause of the decline but the showcase that disguised it.

From Empire to Immigration Discussion

In more recent pages, the issue has shifted to the present. Part of the discussion links the colonial heritage to the current migratory phenomenon and the arrival of people from Latin America, a social tension that other Western European countries also register. Political messages circulate that speak of half a million people in irregular situations, a figure belonging to partisan conflict and not originating from any statistical body. It is, strictly speaking, another conversation. It is advisable not to confuse it with the one about the viceroyalty.

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If there is a verdict, it will depend on what is understood by error. For those who measure the GDP of 1600, the conquest was a bloodletting; for those who measure the map, an unrepeatable antiestéticat. With these elements, the discussion is likely to continue to be reproduced periodically, with both sides continuing to be right at the same time. Which is the most uncomfortable way of never being entirely right.